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Platinum Pro

From 2017 onwards, you can start earning towards the new Platinum Pro level, which will make a great addition to the program, especially for those travelers who do not fly enough to earn the current Executive Platinum but feel that they should get a bigger reward than they are currently getting. The new tier is earned after 90 flight segments, or 75k EQM’s (Elite Qualifying Miles). The benefits of the new tier include but are not limited to the following:

In the later stage of 2017, more additional changes will be implemented into the overall program:

Upgrade prioritization: passengers will be ranked according to their Elite status levels, followed by how many EQD where earned in the last 12 months.

Upgrades on award tickets: Executive Platinum members can now use their complimentary 500-mile upgrades on award tickets from American Airlines.

Earning EQD’s with Credit Cards

AAdvantage Aviator Blue, Aviator Red, and Aviator Business MasterCard’s, will earn $3,000 EQD’s for spending $25,000 on qualifying purchases during the year.

AAdvantage Aviator Silver MasterCard will be able to earn up to $6,000 EQD’s for spending $50,000 in a calendar year. Card holders will earn $3,000 after the first $25,000 spent, and will then earn an additional $3,000 EQD’s after reaching a $50,000 spend on qualifying purchases.

Finally

This is good news for a lot of regular travelers who don’t quite fly enough to earn Executive Platinum. Also, American is also making their invite-only level ConciergeKey a published tier in its own right. If you regularly fly AA enough to earn elite status, make sure you keep up to date on the changes they publish.

Even More Changes Coming to AAdvantage in 2017

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AA is only too happy to screw their long time customers once again. As a lifetime platinum, I will not have lifetime third tier status and if not for the new credit card eqd’s allowed for the silver card, I would not even bother keeping my exp.

At least United lets you earn lifetime status in all of their top tiers including Global Services.

The points and miles “game” is certainly changing the travel world for consumers. I know that the “game” has very positively affected my ability to travel for pleasure. I suppose that in the grand scheme, when it comes to business travel, the “game” really hasn’t changed that much at all since business travelers will still have to travel and the business is still going to pay for them to do it so… time for me to find a job with more business travel so that I can get more pleasure travel opportunities off of the points/miles earned! And the CC sign-up bonuses of course!

Some may disagree, but even the lowest tier, AAdvantage Gold, has been well worth my loyalty to AA this year. Maybe I travel fairly lonely short hops, but I’ve had great success with the <500 complimentary upgrades.

These changes were really disheartening because I otherwise would have requalified for Platinum with their traditional distance-based miles earning, but now I’ll just be Gold. Still, I didn’t requalify for status on either United or Delta, however, so I will continue to fly AA/OW carriers next year. Come 2018 I will be unaffiliated, I imagine. Southwest here I come 🙂

The part that bugs me is that if you are PlatinumPro and you get notice 72 hours before the flight that you have an upgrade, what’s going to happen when a concierge or Exec Plat walks in right before the flight and bumps you out of the upgrade that you had “guaranteed” before the flight and there are no other seats available to keep your upgrade? Doesn’t sound like such a great deal. My airport has a lot of concierge and Exec Plats that totally screw up using my 500 mile upgrades. Between my wife and I we have almost 100 upgrades but can hardly ever use them!!

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